Late last year, research firm Canalys predicted that Apple might become the world's largest PC manufacturer during the fourth quarter of 2011 if tablets were counted alongside more traditional computers. With the major firms now having reported their sales numbers for the quarter, Canalys has pieced together the numbers to confirm that Apple has indeed taken the lead on the strength of the iPad.

Quote:

Canalys today announced that Apple, after reporting stellar results, became the leading worldwide client PC vendor in Q4 2011. Apple shipped over 15 million iPads and five million Macs, representing 17% of the total 120 million client PCs shipped globally in Q4. Overall, the total client PC market, including desktops, netbooks, notebooks, and pads grew 16% year-on-year. Excluding pads, the client PC market declined 0.4%.

The report notes that tablets such as the iPad accounted for 22% of PC sales during the quarter, with the Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble Nook also contributing to the strong tablet performance.

Based on data from Canalys and other research firms, it appears that the iPad would have been able to top the list even without the help of the Mac, which itself achieved record sales during the quarter. Apple sold 15.43 million iPads during the quarter, with Canalys, Gartner, and IDC all pegging non-tablet market leader HP's shipments between 14.7 and 15.3 million units.

Whether or not iPads and other tablets should be counted as PCs has become a vigorous debate as observers take differing views on how "personal computers" should be defined. But with Apple making the iPad "PC Free" by eliminating the need to sync to a computer via iTunes and increasing numbers of consumers relying on their iPads for everyday computer functionalities such as browsing, email and music, as well as a broad array of apps, lines between the two types of devices are becoming increasingly blurred.

"Excluding pads, the client PC market declined 0.4%." That sounds more like market saturation than the end of the PC. Glad to see that. I also agree that they are not the same - but so aren't PC to Laptop to Netbook. They all have andvantages and disadvantages - or their niche. Funny thing is - I have all of them and the only one which is truely replaced by the iPad is my Netbook. Anyone interested buying it?

What is going on here? Waiting for the Android folks to offer explanations. This can't be true. Windows and Android are not bags of malware, have stable and robust OS, and perfect in design. Anyone? Hello?

Edit: Spoke too soon. Looks like they are already trickling in to correct us Apple folks on our misunderstanding of Apple's superior products and success.

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In the last quarter, Apple sold 5.6% of all PCs world wide. That's the number of PCs sold; if you count revenue then Apple's share is substantially higher. If you count profit then Apple's share is about at the top

5.6% would have been enough to get into the top five in most of the last fifteen years; in some years it would have made number 3. Currently it doesn't, mostly because there is more concentration of sales at the top, and because the number 5 ASUS is taking huge numbers of sales away from the number 4 Acer (so the company that Apple will overtake to become #5 in world wide unit sales is most likely not ASUS but Acer, if the trend continues).

Here comes the big argument. It's boiling over every time an article like this is on the front page: the tablet is not a PC.

The tablet wirelessly hooks to a keyboard, it hooks to storage devices, it allows document creation and swapping, it up/down loads pictures/video/audio/etc. It plays games, it runs applications, blah blah.

It's a PC. Get over it. If it isn't a PC in your mind now, it will be with iPad3 or iPad4 or iPad5, and the only real change will be autonomous nature of the iPad which disconnects it from another computer. It's already as powerful as iBooks from the early 2000s, which weren't really PCs either by stunted logic.

Here comes the big argument. It's boiling over every time an article like this is on the front page: the tablet is not a PC.

The tablet wirelessly hooks to a keyboard, it hooks to storage devices, it allows document creation and swapping, it up/down loads pictures/video/audio/etc. It plays games, it runs applications, blah blah.

It's a PC. Get over it. If it isn't a PC in your mind now, it will be with iPad3 or iPad4 or iPad5, and the only real change will be autonomous nature of the iPad which disconnects it from another computer. It's already as powerful as iBooks from the early 2000s, which weren't really PCs either by stunted logic.

Go back to English class. Get a real simile.

Wow, you are wrong. Again back to my original argument, I can "theoretically" get more work on on a early 2000's ibook than I can on an iPad 2 or 3 or 4 or 5.

What is really holding back the iPad is the software!

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Tablets are computers. How many times have you heard the term Tablet Computing or Tablet PC? The companies that don't see the future of computing as the tablet have their head buried in the sand. Ignoring what is coming for them is not going to prevent it.
Microsoft and the hardware vendors made their success on putting PCs into people's hands for doing simple everyday tasks at a low price. The tablet can do all of that and at a better price with portability. They are getting to be more powerful. In fact they are more powerful than most PCs were just 5 years ago. If Apple can find a way to put even more power into the iPad, merge the portability of iPad and iOS with the desktop apps of MacOS, they will bury the competition (In their own confusion).